ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Syrian security forces on Saturday detained Wassim al-Assad, cousin of toppled dictator Bashar al-Assad, according to state media.
He was detained in rural Homs, near the border with Lebanon.
“The Internal Security Forces, in cooperation with the General Intelligence Service, were able to arrest the criminal Wassim al-Assad on the Syrian-Lebanese border,” a security source in Homs told SANA.
The US sanctioned Wassim in 2023 for leading a paramilitary group for his cousin and trafficking captagon - the amphetamine drug that flooded the Middle East. During the Assad regime, Syria was a main supplier of the drug.
Assad and members of his family fled to Russia when his reign was ended by a coalition of rebel groups last December.
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